DIGITAL. TRENDS. FUTURE.

Amazing. Two young boys send their Lego Man into near space with a $ 400,- USD construction. They used a balloon to send the Lego Man including a wide angel video camera almost 25 km into space.

Article by LA Times: Two Canadian high school students have successfully launched a Lego man almost 80,000 feet above sea level–high enough to capture video of the plastic toy hovering above the curvature of the Earth.

Now the results of their experiment have gone viral, racking up more than 600,000 views on YouTube in just two daysand inspiring the young engineers to make their small astronaut his own Facebook page–Lego Man in Space.

The Toronto Starreports that the two teens, Matthew Ho and Asad Muhammed, were inspired to do the project about a year and a half ago when Ho saw a YouTube video of MIT students who sent a balloon to near space. Ho wanted to see if he could do it too.

The friends spent four and a half months working on the project, mostly on Saturdays. In a video interview with the Star, they said the hardest part was making the parachute, which they decided to hand-sew, even though neither of them had any sewing experience.

They also constructed a lightweight Styrofoam box to carry three point-and-shoot cameras, a wide-angle video camera and a cellphone with a downloadable GPS app. They purchased a professional weather balloon for $85 online. The helium that would lift it up came from a party supply store. For launch, they put two mitten warmers in the Styrofoam box to keep the cameras working at that altitude. The whole project cost them about $400.

After the balloon was constructed, the two waited until weather conditions would ensure that the Lego man would land in Canada and not somewhere in the U.S. because they didn’t want to take their chances with U.S. Homeland Security, the Star reports.

Ho and Muhammed estimate that it took their balloon craft one hour and five minutes to climb 80,000 feet before it finally popped. The descent took a little more than 30 minutes.

Besides online notoriety, the two also received a congratulatory note from Lego.

Back in 2006 I opened an office in China with my former company. It was an exciting time and I enjoyed working with our chinese team a lot. Nevertheless it was also very challenging and it was though to increase efficiency and results, especially working closely with our other teams in Munich, New York and Tokyo. For me China was always very fascinating and I felt that the country was shifting from a leader in production (“made in china”) to a powerhouse of creativity. Especially the speed of innovation and growth in digital media is amazing. Many startups I met grew from zero to 10 million users within weeks. China’s version of twitter “Weibo” has 250 million registered users. And Kai-Fu Lee’s Innovation Works is creating the Golden Age of IT in China.

What is the book about?The main thrust of my book is to show that China no longer is a cheap place to do business anymore and what the implications for the rest of the world are. Labor and real estate costs are rising in the double digits which means manufacturers might need to relocate to markets like Indonesia and Vietnam or convert factories to sell into China rather than just export. The country is undergoing a huge economic shift away from relying on exports to consumption. The book tracks that change by interviewing Chinese to find out what they want, and giving advice on how to stay ahead of that change with marketing, product design, and sales strategies.

Why did you write the book?When I read articles by much of the western media, I realize they are missing out on the great transformations taking place in China today and are often perpetuating outdated views of the country. I decided to write the book to dispel myths about the country and provide an action guide for western businesses on how to sell here.

For instance, whenever I talk to westerners, many assume that China is in an internet black hole because they hear Facebook and Twitter are blocked. That is not true — there is a very vibrant online community here. The average Chinese under the age of 30 spends 22 hours a week online vs 12 hours in the US. But instead of using Facebook, they use Chinese variants like Sina Weibo and Tencent’s QQ. In fact, because of the tight media control, younger Chinese turn to the internet more than counterparts in the west to get more trusted sources of info. The result is that western brands have to embrace digital marketing in China far more than most are. Typically large multinationals only spend 3% of the marketing budgets on the digital side when that number should be much higher.

What was the most exciting, most emotional and most surprising interview you did?The most emotional interview I did were the series of ones I conducted with my now deceased grandmother-in-law Lili Li who was a famous movie star in the 1930s and came from a heavyweight political family. She battled against Jiang Jing (Mao Zedong’s 4th wife) and a member of the Gang of Four and their tyranny that caused the chaos of the Cultural Revolution and untold suffering throughout the nation. My interviews and her story are included in chapter three of the book. It was tough hearing of the pain and torture she and her family went through at the hands of Jiang Qing. Her husband was tortured to death. But it was also inspiring to see how a women stood up to tyranny and eventually helped conquer it.

How will the “Expensive China” influence Europe and Germany?The rise of “Expensive China” has serious implications for Germany and Europe. Germany is actually well positioned to benefit from China’s rise. China actually buys more from Germany than it exports to it. Germany is a model in many ways for creating an economy system that is sustainable — it produces something the Chinese cannot do right now. Unfortunately, as the book shows, not all nations like the US are adjusting well to the new world order and China’s rise. America needs to stop trying to scapegoat America for all its economic ills and instead focus on adjusting its economy to be more competitive as Germany has.

I am proud to be part of the game changers, the disrupters and the doers, a new bread of companies in the recruiting and job industry leveraging social media to change the online-job-posting and recruiting industry as you know it.

RECOMY has started with a simple idea and has now become a cutting edge web platform combining the power of several social networks. Katharina told me about her idea in mid 2010 and I was fascinated right from the start. We started working on the business plan in October 2010, found a family office who supported us, selected other team members and founded RECOMY AG in June 2011. Since then we have spent days and nights coding, building a unique user experience and talking to clients. RECOMY is ready to launch very soon and we are undertaking usage and scalability tests.

With a team of six we have done bootstrapping par excellence, thinking about our MVP and already solved many challenges on our startup journey.
Created in the heart of Europe we are looking forward to kick the ass of the market leaders, like Monster or CareerBuilder, and compete the US innovators, like BranchOut or Identified

Yesterday I hold the first official keynote as CEO of RECOMY about “Success in Social Recruiting”. I presented some insights in our development at RECOMY and showed and explained a lot of screenshots of our brand new social recruiting platform. For this public version I had to take most of these screenshots out (as you can understand) since we are not public, yet.

I hold a keynote speech about the Future of Mobile Health. The impact of mobile media is fundamentally changing the health-, pharma and fitness industry. The goal of the impulse speech was to dive into todays trends, understand key-drivers and learn how to be prepared for the future.

The stethoscope was invented in 1816 and is still used in by doctors on a daily basis. Nevertheless technologies have improved or replaced many manual instruments and tools in medicine today. Especially Mobile Media is bringing medicine and healthcare to a completely new level.

People are using technology for permanent monitoring and logging of vital signs, while doctors are remotely supervising the health status of patients suffering from chronic diseases, such as Diabetes and Asthma, via their mobile device (e.g. smartphone or tablet). Cost of technology is lower than ever and consumer devices can be used for professional applications. Currently there are 17,000 mHealth applications in major app stores, 74% of them adhering to the paid business model. With the growing sophistication level of mHealth applications, 14% of the total market revenue in the next 5 years will come from application download revenues.

Today the new CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, has presented the new iPhone 4S in Cupertino, California – USA. Apple has introduced a re-make of the iPhone 3G aswell – the iPhone 3GS – so they are strictly keeping in line with their strategy.

The 4S will come in both black and white, starting at $199 for 16GB and $299 for the 32GB, but the big news is a new 64GB model coming in at a whopping $399. You’ll be able to pre-order this friday, October 7th, and it’ll start shipping on October 14th in the US, Canada, Australia, UK, France, Germany, and Japan. Oh, and Apple is welcoming Sprint to the family here in the States.

I started my talk with a couple of powerful questions:
– What is the power of my generation?
– What are the global challenges of my generation?
– Who is solving our challenges? CO2, Global Warming etc.?
– Is Greenwashing the solution?
– How many planets do we have?
– How many plans do we have?
– Do we have a Plan B?
– Are Mobile Antennas real „trees“?
– Or, will trees be the future Mobile Antennas?
– Can Mobile Media improve Energy Efficiency?
– How can Social Media disrupt „green“ markets?
– When will Carbon-Negative Cities be reality?
– How will Green Mobility look like?
– Can Bio-Led Trees be our future street lights?
– Is Nathan Myhrvold‘s Geo-Engineering the Plan B?

Social Media is becoming an essential part for every recruiting strategy. Companies are turning to Facebook, twitter and other social media platforms to find talent. Here is a well-done infographic about “Social Recruiting”.

Since the invention of paid-televoting and paid-short-messaging (SMS) the TV industry has creatively adapted or developed TV show formats to increase their revenues. Televoting is mainly used for decision making, opinion polling or game-shows. In the age of Facebook, where users spent most of their time on the social network, Endemol is introducing the first paid-online voting system via Facebook credits.

The consumer behavior is changing and is bridging the gap between TV and Web usage. TV Channels could not charge our TV audience for a “click”, that’s why the focus was on televoting as the major decision tool for BigBrother.

With over 600 million global Facebook users, of which are over 20 million in Germany, the social network is the place where consumers spend most of their time online. The usage of Facebook Fan-Pages or Facebook Apps have already lead to a new discipline for Marketeers. Social Media Marketing is now part of the modern Marketing Communication Mix.

“While we envisioned, inspired and strategically developed the concept, we collaborated for the technical development with one of the best App-Developer in Germany I can think of”, says Monty Metzger. PLAZZ Entertainment developed the Facebook Voting App for BigBrother Germany.

Jürgen Mayer, CEO of PLAZZ Entertainment, is convinced that the new Facebook Voting will be changing the TV industry and lead to new show formats, such as Televoting did in the nineties. “The technical development of innovative concepts like this is a challenge, but we did our best to deliver a high-quality user experience with a simple and attractive usability. And we are proud that we, as a german company, are setting new standards in the global entertainment industry”, says Jürgen Mayer.

The Facebook Voting App is the first App that uses Facebook Credits for “non gaming” virtual goods. For the TV Channels this is a new revenue opportunity for the future. And virtual currency, like Facebook Credits, may become the standard for Social TV projects.

Endemol’s Facebook Voting App is just the beginning and there are already more ideas prepared for launch in the near future.

Monty Metzger, author and trend scout for the organization he founded, Ahead of Time, talks to Untether.tv about the impact of the highly personal mobile device, mobile social media trends and the predictive analytics being crunched behind the scenes.

UNTETHER.tv was the official broadcast partner for the recent Mobile Innovation Week 2010 and this is one of the sessions recorded while on location in Toronto.

We live in exciting times. In one minute – 60 seconds – on the web…
… 70 new domain names are registered.
… almost 100.000 tweets on twitter are posted.
… more than 370.000 voice calls are happening on skype.
… more than 13.000 iPhone Apps are downloaded.
… more than 600 new videos are uploaded to YouTube.
… almost 700.000 status updates on facebook are posted.
… and over 170 million eMails have been sent.
etc. etc.

Well done motion graphic video with key facts about facebook in general. Furthermore the production team raised the question how life without facebook would look like.
For this question, I also started a discussion on Quora.

I am honored to be invited by French President, Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy, to an invite-only gathering of global digital leaders, right before this year’s G8 Summit in Paris. The e-G8 Forum will include heads of state as well as key tech personalities like Eric Schmidt of Google, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg all expected to attend. The event is hosted and chaired by Publicis Groupe CEO, Mr. Maurice Lévy.

President Sarkozy is currently heading the Group of Eight (G8) with Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. The major topic of the upcoming summit will be the state and the future of the Internet and the digital ecosystem on a global level. The goal of the e-G8 is to provide the G8 leaders with fresh-ideas and key insights.

Well, fresh ideas and digital know-how is something I can definitely bring into this diverse gathering in Paris. Since the publication of the Vision of Mobile Media for the year 2020 (Mocom2020) and several innovation projects at Ahead of Time, this is someting I had been asked before, but not by a President of a state. Exciting.

Discussions at the two-day Forum will be a mixture of plenary sessions and in-depth workshops where a wide variety of themes will be addressed, including:
– The Internet as key driver for economic growth
– The emergence of global digital citizenship
– The digital technologies of the future
– How best to promote innovation clusters
– The mobile revolution and its impact on commerce, media and advertising
– Privacy and IP protection

President Nicolas Sarkozy will himself deliver the opening keynote address.

You may already be familiar with the success of the Car Sharing Service “ZipCar”. Now BMW is entering this space with its own competitor, called DriveNow. The big difference are (of course) the cars, because DriveNow is the first premium car sharing service offering BMW and MINI cars.http://drive-now.com/

All Details about DriveNow:
The BMW Group and Sixt AG are planning a unique and innovative car sharing venture. With effect from April 2011 onwards – initially in Munich and later in Berlin – the two companies intend to join forces in offering a modern mobility concept under the brand-name DriveNow; this new product will combine vehicles and service of the highest quality with simple, flexible usage. DriveNow is the first car sharing concept to place an emphasis on efficient premium vehicles and comprehensive service. Vehicles may be hired and dropped off wherever the customer needs them, thus clearly differentiating DriveNow from products offered by other competitors.Continue Reading..

I you are a social media addict and passionate about building scalable web platforms this might be something for you. Furthermore you would be one of the first employees and you will have the opportunity to become co-founder while getting a secured full-time salary.

What You Will Be Doing!

You will be part of our small group where everyone is part of the creative process. You will not only oversee software development, but also aspects of platform and product management. The perfect candidate is creative yet pragmatic, comfortable multitasking yet able to focus on a problem, and a fast learner.

What we are looking for!
– Significant experience in building and launching strong (high-traffic) web applications.
– Experience with web UI technologies — DHTML, CSS, Javascript, Ajax, etc.
– Experience with one or more database solutions MySQL, Postgresql, MongoDB etc.
– Integrating features with various third-party APIs, including Facebook Graph API
– Fluent in one or more OO or scripting languages like Java, PHP, Python, Perl.
– Grails or Ruby on Rails know-how.
– A strong interest in social media and social networks, with some exposure to the technology/concepts behind them.
– Excellent communication and documentation skills, with the ability to consistently contribute creative ideas.

What’s in it for you!?
– Be part in an exciting new Startup.
– Excellent Compensation & Salary.
– Co-Founder Shares & stock offerings.

This position is open as of 3/17/2011.
Job Position: Munich, Germany.
Please send us your CV, LinkedIn/XING Profile and Links to your recent projects.Apply hereinfo (at) aheadoftime (dot) de

A facebook intern created a visualized view of friendship on facebook on a global level. The result is this impressive image, visualizing the friend-relations of more than 500 million facebook users. It is interesting how we are connected, but also where are the main gaps where facebook is not present at all. Well done.

When the data is the social graph of 500 million people, there are a lot of lenses through which you can view it. One that piqued my curiosity was the locality of friendship. I was interested in seeing how geography and political borders affected where people lived relative to their friends. I wanted a visualization that would show which cities had a lot of friendships between them.

I began by taking a sample of about ten million pairs of friends from Apache Hive, our data warehouse. I combined that data with each user’s current city and summed the number of friends between each pair of cities. Then I merged the data with the longitude and latitude of each city.
….Continue Reading..